


For Cats Well Versed In Mysteries

by softlyforgotten



Series: Substances Colliding [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-24
Updated: 2011-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/pseuds/softlyforgotten





	For Cats Well Versed In Mysteries

It was a week before Ryan noticed the curtains. They were brand new, vibrant red in his faded living room, and it struck him as kind of weird that he hadn’t noticed them before. He wandered over and fingered the material idly, and on the sofa Beatrice raised her head and gave him a Look, as if to say _fucking finally_. Ryan stuck his tongue out at her and then clapped his hand over his mouth, horrified. Goddamn Brendon, rubbing off on him.

He turned back to the curtains, frowning at them. It was the strangest thing that had happened in a year, although after the events of that week a year ago, Ryan felt a little silly calling anything else “strange”. Nothing could match that week. And yet…

“It’s a mystery,” Ryan told Beatrice, who regarded him narrowly for a moment and then dropped her head and went to sleep.

Ten minutes later, Brendon called in a huff because Ryan had apparently forgotten that he was meant to be meeting Brendon for lunch, and Ryan was too busy hurrying out the door to think about the new curtains anymore.

*

“I mean, really,” Brendon said around a full mouth. “ _Really_ , you’d think I’d have trained you well enough to remember goddamn _lunch_ by now. Moron.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said, grinning a little foolishly at him. “I think I thought it was Saturday. Anyway. You coming over tonight?”

Brendon looked at him suspiciously. “I have a thing to finish for class. Can you behave yourself?”

“Believe it or not,” Ryan told him dryly, “You’re not that irresistible.”

“Lies, all lies,” Brendon said companionably, and knocked his foot against Ryan’s. Ryan smiled and looked down and Brendon swallowed the last of his tofu burger and stood up. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I’m coming. Come on, I’ll drive us back.”

Ryan stood up and followed him the two blocks to Brendon’s car, arguing about whether the new upcoming Blink-182 album could possibly surpass any of their old stuff. Brendon looked at him with his mouth twitching around the corners, which probably meant that Ryan had gotten too invested in the subject and was about to hit one of them in the eye with a flailing hand, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

“—so, yeah, you are really, really wrong,” he finished, just as they reached Brendon’s battered car. Brendon flipped him the bird idly and Ryan said, “Hey, Brendon, hey.”

Brendon turned, eyebrows raised, and Ryan backed him against the car and kissed him, sliding his hand under Brendon’s t-shirt and keeping it warm against the small of his back. Brendon opened his mouth and sighed, quiet and content, curling one arm around Ryan’s neck.

Ryan put his spare hand in Brendon’s pocket and tugged out his keys, before breaking away and smirking. “You’re so easy,” he said.

Brendon scowled and made grabby hands. “Jerk,” he said, and then, “C’mon, Ryan, I’d like to get to your place sometime in the next month—”

“Uh uh uh,” Ryan said smugly. “There will be no reckless driving on the roads today, asshole. I think you’ll find the passenger’s seat on the other side.”

“Fuck you,” Brendon said cheerfully, and Ryan laughed.

*

At Ryan’s house, Brendon finished his last notes on the composition from class (his folder was still lying on the counter from Friday night) while Ryan read his book, and they had a reasonably early dinner. Ryan had bought an Asian vegetarian cookbook about six months ago and had been slowly but surely working his way through it since, leaving scraps of paper as bookmarks for the ones they liked. They ate on the floor, Brendon rubbing his eyes and complaining about his Master’s proposal, how he thought he needed to rewrite a whole section.

They were lazy, that night, stripping naked and then just rolling their hips together and breathing raggedly, foreheads resting together on Ryan’s bed. Brendon curled long fingers around both of them and Ryan came with a gasp while Brendon jerked his hips frantically, rubbing his dick against Ryan’s – now slick – stomach. Afterward they showered together, Brendon surprising him by dropping down to his knees, and had a minor argument over who slept in the wet spot (in the end, they squished together on the dry side, even though Brendon flailed in his sleep and would undoubtedly knock them both out of the bed at some stage of the night).

Ryan was almost asleep when Brendon asked in a hushed whisper, “You ever think about going to college?”

Ryan blinked sleepily, wriggle back until Brendon was tucked closer behind him. “I’ve been to college,” he reminded him. “Remember?”

“I mean going back,” Brendon said. “Grad school. Or another degree altogether, if you wanted.”

“Um,” Ryan said. “Why? I have a job—”

“You’re a librarian,” Brendon agreed, voice thick with amusement. “But I just think. Don’t you get bored? Don’t you wanna like… don’t you miss studying? And writing?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Ryan bit his lip, head falling back softly against the pillows. “I haven’t ever really thought about it.”

“Hmmn,” Brendon said. He leaned forward and touched his lips to Ryan’s jaw, light and warm. “Maybe you should.”

*

On Wednesday, there was a spotty pink and purple bathmat in the shape of a fish on Ryan’s bathroom floor. Ryan stared at it. He couldn’t remember seeing it before or putting it there, but Brendon did say that he was the most unobservant guy on the planet. Maybe he’d had it for years, and this was just a weird moment of recognition, the opposite of déjà vu.

It was good, though; when he stepped out from his shower, he landed on the mat, safe from the freezing cold of his bathroom tiles.

*

Ryan knew from the moment he stepped in the door that Brendon was in a bad mood, and he wished, a little tiredly, that Brendon could find it within himself to go and be in a bad mood at his _own_ place rather than Ryan’s. As it was, though, every now and then Ryan stepped in the door and was greeted by the sound of an overly angry, crashing version of Rachmaninoff, and Brendon would be bitchy and out of sorts for the rest of the evening.

It hadn’t taken long before Brendon had brought around his spare keyboard to Ryan’s place. “If I’m gonna stay here, like, at all,” he’d said, eyes wide and guileless, “I need some music, Ross, come on,” and Ryan had sighed and nodded, playing up the fondly exasperated role even though he didn’t mind at all, really. Every now and then, Brendon would teach him stuff, running through easy scales and pieces and leaving some of his oldest music books around the place (because, as Ryan had discovered, Brendon never threw _anything_ out). Ryan practiced a fair bit, actually, when Brendon wasn’t there. He wished he hadn’t given up the guitar, all those years ago. He’d given it away, though, after college. Spencer had mentioned a friend saving for one, and Ryan hadn’t played in months, anyway.

Now, he thought, _maybe, maybe_ , but it was reckless, buying a guitar on a whim. Ryan didn’t need one, anyway. He didn’t need much.

In the living room, Brendon slammed his hands down particularly violently as Ryan entered and Ryan thought, _not much_ , and grinned. He said, “You want dinner?”

“Fuck,” Brendon said coldly, and crashed to a halt in the middle of the song. “You made me mess up.”

“You’ve been waiting for me to get home so you could say that for like, an hour at least,” Ryan told him airily. “Brendon. Are you hungry?”

“No,” Brendon snapped, and Ryan shrugged and ordered enough Chinese food for both of them, anyway.

“I think it’s sad that I connect composers with your moods, now,” Ryan said later, when Brendon was sitting straight-backed and hard-faced on the floor, chewing with unnecessary vehemence on some noodles. Ryan was trying not to laugh. “Rachmaninoff when you’re shitty about something, Bach when you miss your family, Beethoven when you’re stressed – it’s getting a bit predictable, you know, you should mix up your game a bit.”

Brendon looked at him, mouth twitching a little. “What’s Mozart, then?” he asked. Ryan raised his eyebrows and then leered spectacularly, making a swift grab for Brendon’s ass, and Brendon rolled away. “Oh, no, no,” he said, but he was laughing now, despite himself, face scrunched up like he was annoyed at Ryan for making him do it. “No, you’ve got no idea, you’re so full of shit—”

“Vivaldi, then,” Ryan said, and hummed the first bars of Spring, trying to grope Brendon’s dick at the same time, and Brendon laughed and laughed.

*

Ryan and Beatrice went on a tour of their house, walking side by side. There was a piece of art that looked like Gerard’s in the hallway, a bowl of brightly coloured (and real, Ryan noticed, checking) fruit in the kitchen (along with a selection of bright letter magnets and one of those magnetic poetry kits on the fridge), a new blue quilt set on Ryan’s bed, a bunch of soft, thick and (surprise, surprise) brightly coloured towels in Ryan’s bathroom, and three pot plants on his veranda. They looked like they were growing, too, spreading vines out and taking over the corners.

There was a throw on Ryan’s couch, and new cushions, too. There were a bunch of CDs that he didn’t remember buying, but he thought that they were probably just ones Brendon had left at one stage or another. There were a small collection of pictures of parrots in rainforests, that looked like they had been torn from a magazine, stuck in odd places around his house.

“Hmmn,” Ryan said. Beatrice started to wash her face.

*

When Brendon arrived, Ryan was sitting at his table, surrounded by a huge pile of paperwork and running his hands through his hair. “I can’t do this!” he wailed. “This was a stupid, stupid idea, and I blame you—”

“What,” Brendon began, and then he leaned over Ryan’s shoulder and stopped talking, started smiling. After a minute, he said, “I don’t know if I can date a Creative Writing grad student, Ross, that might not go well with my musician cred.”

“Shut up, it’ll go perfectly,” Ryan said, crossly. “Anyway, you have to help me now, because it’s your fault I’m doing this.”

“Okay,” Brendon said.

“And,” Ryan said, only slightly mollified, “You have to move in with me. Because otherwise I’ll forget to go, or something.”

“Okay,” Brendon said.

Ryan looked up quickly, just to check, but it was okay, of course, because Brendon was smiling.

*

Four days before Brendon was due to move in, Ryan opened the door and found wind chimes hanging from the little space left on the veranda. There was a bit of a breeze, and they tinkled prettily enough. Ryan folded his arms and leaned back against the wall and watched them. After a while, he started to smile. Then he called Brendon.

“Are you even going to have anything left to move into here?” he asked when Brendon picked up, and Brendon laughed.

“I have some more photos of birds,” Brendon told him.

“Well, that’s good, then,” Ryan said, meaning it.


End file.
